TECH TALK
faced by aircraft, ground systems and communication mechanisms. Much of this has been looked at already in the previous years, but may need more guidance on what the FAA will accept, per the recent directives from Congress. Such guidance would allow
industry to better focus its efforts, and perhaps speed up the process of updating cybersecurity policies. One of the more powerful
directives identified is for the FAA to address is the extent to which existing rulemaking, policy and guidance
to promote safety also promote aircraft systems information security protection, and what should change (yes, you read that correctly). This set of directives should inject a new set of expanded guidelines, which could provide manufacturers with new requirements on how to insert cybersecurity design requirements for all aircraft components and systems which contain software. Often times, security features were added onto existing designs, which may not always be sufficient. Another key change could be a requirement for all OEMs to perform some form of cyber testing of aircraft parts as part of the certification process (this would entail a major change at the FAA).
Another deadline that Congress has enacted is that the open recommendations issued in 2015 by the Government Accountability Office to assess and research the potential cost and timetable of developing and maintaining an agency-wide threat model will be implemented. The FAA needs to work this jointly with NIST. This model will be continually reevaluated and updated in order to address evolving cyber threats faced by the FAA and its systems. The FAA will have one year to perform this task. While the GAO report is thorough (it can be found at
www.gao.gov/ products/GAO-15-370), a short synopsis of what is recommended is: 1) Assess developing a cybersecurity threat model,
2) Include FAA’s Office of Safety (AVS) as a full member of the Committee, and
3) Develop a plan to implement NIST revisions within OMB’s time frames.
FAA concurred with
recommendations one and three, but believes that AVS is sufficiently involved in cybersecurity. GAO maintains that AVS should be a
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